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Saturday, February 13, 2010

Mixed Media Heart Garland

Remember the paper cloth in pinks and reds? Grabbing snippets of time here and there this week I was actually able to make the heart garland I had in mind (based on Perkin's bird garland). The first step was to cut out the hearts using a cookie cutter as the model:I cut four from the four sheets of paper cloth, to make two hearts each. But because the garland I envisioned was a vertical one, I thought eight hearts would be too long, so I saved the light pink hearts with the pale gold shimmer for another project.

Next, I embroidered them, using Caron Collection Wildflowers thread in African Sunset and dark rose silver-lined seed beads. The red and dark pink hearts I did with feather stitch (my favorite stitch), long stitches with a few beads on them to slide around, and seed stitches with the beads:For the pink confetti hearts I used star stitches and a line of bead embroidery echoing the yarn embedded in the paper cloth:For the pink and silver hearts I wanted to use the embroidery to help anchor the candy foil, and my first thought was to do so sort of the way one attaches shisha mirrors, which led to me experimenting with different Hardanger needleweaving techniques:But the fourth square I did with simple straight stitches, and i liked the primitive patchwork effect so much I undid the rest of the embroidery and redid it:I think this is my favorite.

The last step was to cut a long piece of fuchsia yarn, sandwich it between two hearts, and sew around the edge with a zigzag stitch. I repeated that for all the hearts, spacing them 5 inches apart, and added a fake metal heart charm and some tiny metal clapper bells to the bottom. Et voila:I'm quite pleased with it, except 1) I don't care for the look of the zigzag, and will use a straight stitch next time (especially since there is no worry that paper cloth would unravel) and 2) I can't put it up because it is too much of a temptation for the Beadboys to yank. Damn wiener kids.